“Keeping the Peace” in Newark

It’s June 7, 2006, and Michael Berg’s Delaware congressional campaign is getting the most attention it ever will.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Islamic extremist who joined forces with al-Qaeda following the invasion of Iraq by the United States, has been killed.

It’s believed that al-Zarqawi himself was the one in 2004 who beheaded Berg’s son Nick, who was in Iraq looking for work repairing radio towers.

Everyone from local news reporters to “Inside Edition” to CNN’s Larry King will talk to Berg on this day as he tries unsuccessfully to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Castle.

But journalists looking for a bereaved Berg to dance on the grave of a hated terrorist were in for a shock.

At the press conference he struck a sympathetic tone: “I think any loss of human life is a loss for all of us. In al-Zarqawi’s case, it’s a double loss. Not only was he a human being with parents suffering the same way that my family and I have suffered, but he’s also a political figure, and his death is going to reignite the next wave of revenge.”

In a separate one-on-one interview with a Delaware television station, the retired teacher and longtime anti-war activist said President Bush was “a bigger terrorist than al-Zarqawi.”

Larry King let out an audible sigh of frustration when Berg, dressed in his trademark long-sleeve t-shirt and blue jeans, refused to say the death of the terrorist was a good thing.

And while Berg played political ping-pong with pundits and buzzed through a 15-hour media blitz at his campaign manager’s Wilmington home, independent local filmmakers J.J. Garvine and Tai Parquet caught it all.

Now, more than three years later, their documentary “Keeping the Peace”[1] makes it’s Delaware debut at the Newark Film Festival[2], which begins today. Earlier this year, the film won the Audience Choice Award at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival.

Berg, who now lives in Virginia, will reunite with Garvine and Parquet at the festival, hosting a question and answer session after the film’s lone festival showing at 7:10 p.m. Saturday at the Newark Cinema Center 3 in Newark Shopping Center.

“I thought it was a fine film,” says Ken Grant, the then-communications director for the Republican State Committee who was interviewed in the film and saw it at the Philadelphia festival. “Anyone who has ever been involved in politics, especially Delaware politics, should appreciate this film.”

Without a real budget or crew, Garvine and Parquet spent eight months documenting Berg’s run for Congress, which came two years after his son’s heartbreaking and public killing. (A video of the beheading was put online by al-Qaeda, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to view the ghastly footage.)

They were there when Berg crashed a candidate’s forum at Brandywine High School and was led off the stage by police after he covered his mouth with a bumper sticker in protest.

They were there when Berg fired his campaign manager and friend John Atkeison and split with the Green Party before Election Day.

And they were there on Election Day when Berg lost in an expected landslide, taking in only 4,463 votes, giving him 1.8 percent of the vote against Castle’s 57 percent, which easily won him re-election.

The warts-and-all documentary shows the ups and downs of the campaign, including a miffed Atkeison unloading on Berg after being fired.

“I wanted him to win and he didn’t want to give up his role as a martyr,” a stung Atkeison tells the camera only after filmmakers promise the footage won’t be shown until after Election Day.

“This was not going to be a campaign video,” Garvine says before Parquet adds, “I didn’t want to use the movie as a vehicle to promote his platform. For me, it was a story of his journey, his rehabilitation.”

It’s an interesting project for the filmmakers, who met while working at Citibank together 11 years ago. They last worked together on Garvine’s 2005 comedy “13th Grade,” which boasted an oddball cast that included Dustin Diamond (“Saved by the Bell”) and wrestling legend Captain Lou Albano.

Still, Berg said he had no qualms about opening up to the first-time documentarians, especially after getting to know them on the campaign trail.

“I trusted them a lot more than the professional media,” Berg says. “There were a lot of long, lonely rides. It was nice having the company.”

In the end, Berg’s time in Delaware was short-lived. Berg and his wife, Suzanne, moved to Norfolk, Va., in 2007, to be near their daughter and two grandchildren.

Looking back at two years of grieving and campaigning in Delaware, Berg knows one thing: He’ll probably never run for public office again.

“I didn’t enjoy the political part of it very much — not being invited to forums, and the Democrats were not very nice to me a few times. It just got old very fast. And by the time it was over, I was ready for it to be over,” he says.

Once the film was finished, the trio watched it together in Berg’s basement, with Garvine on one side of the former candidate and Parquet on the other.

Berg watched as the most turbulent time of his life unfolded before him once again — his son’s murder, his anti-war protests and his failed run for the House of Representatives.

“I think they did a fabulous job, but I can’t view it objectively,” he says of the film. “I just can’t believe they got the whole story in there.”

Parquet remembers sitting next to Berg as they watched the film and recalls Berg’s first words to them once the credits rolled: “He said, ‘That was very therapeutic.’ I think there was some catharsis there.”